Follow the author of this article

Follow the topics within this article

On a chilly morning in February 2008, Detective Constable Christine Freeman took a call to say a nine-year old girl was missing in Dewsbury, west Yorkshire. She joined the inquiry with a heavy heart.

“It was thick fog, the temperature was minus four and if this little girl had got lost and spent the night outside she couldn’t have survived,” she recalls. “So my first thought was that we were looking for a child who was probably dead.”

Sheridan Smith as Julie Bushby in the BBC1 drama The MoorsideCredit:
Stuart Wood/PA

Over the next three weeks, in a frantic effort to find her, police questioned 1,500 motorists and searched 3,000 homes. More than 250 officers and 60 detectives worked on the £3.2 million inquiry, including Christine, who was appointed family liaison officer. But from the moment she arrived on the scene she felt something was wrong.

“When I got to the house Karen and her boyfriend, Craig Meehan, were playing on an X-Box. Karen hardly looked up,” she recalls. “After a few minutes my phone rang. I had a pop song as my ringtone and Karen got up and started dancing to it. I remember thinking 'this is really odd’.” Even so, she could not have predicted quite how odd the case would turn out to be.

Christine, 59, has retired from the police force now but still lives in Liversedge, just four miles from the Moorside estate, a cluster of redbrick semis surrounded by fields, where the Matthews family lived. As a mother she knew she would be distraught if her child went missing.

Christine Freeman played by Siobhan Finneran in MoorsideCredit:
BBC/BBC

Yet Karen, 32 – a mother of seven children by five different fathers - seemed curiously unconcerned: “Statistics tell you that if a child isn’t found within 48 hours you must fear the worst, so I tried to keep it real, to prepare her: I’d say “If Shannon’s been missing this long it’s not likely she’s coming home”, but Karen never seemed to take it in. She’d say “It’ll be all right, she’ll come home’.”

The search for Shannon is now the subject of a compelling, two-part drama, The Moorside, starring Sheridan Smith as Julie Bushby, leader of the estate’s residents’ association, who supported Karen and organised locals into teams to assist the police.

A news programmes came on, showing Shannon’s photograph and Karen said to one of the children “Look! There’s Shannon. She’s a star!” as if she was making light of itChristine Freeman remembers when she first felt something was wrong

Shannon’s disappearance became headline news, with film crews and reporters stationed outside the family house. In the street, sympathetic neighbours hugged Karen and gave her presents.

Christine continued to have a nagging feeling she knew more than she was letting on – and was lapping up the attention: “She enjoyed the fact that the press knew her name, that they’d all call out to her and follow her and that the police were on the doorstep.”

When the Matthews family had to leave the house to allow a police search, they stayed with Karen’s friend Natalie Brown, who lived a few doors away.

“A news programmes came on, showing Shannon’s photograph and Karen said to one of the children “Look! There’s Shannon. She’s a star!” As if she was making light of it… Natalie thought that was very strange. She came to me and said 'something’s not right’.”

But as Christine points out, gut feeling isn’t evidence and people mid-trauma don’t always behave the way you expect. There was nothing to connect Karen to her daughter’s disappearance. Then, more than three weeks after Shannon vanished, police received a call suggesting they “have a look at” Mick Donovan, the 39-year-old uncle of Karen’s boyfriend Craig.

The cast of MoorsideCredit:
BBC/BBC Pictures

Shannon was found in his flat in Batley Carr, a mile from home, drugged and concealed in the base of a divan bed.

“I’ll never forget hearing she was safe,” says Christine. “I sat with her in the station and officers were coming by, just wanting to see her. Some were crying. They’d put their lives on hold to search for this child, not seeing their own families. You can’t help but get emotionally involved.

“Shannon was totally oblivious, bless her. She didn’t realise what was going on, which was probably a good thing.”

DC Christine Freeman was the family liaison officer for Karen MatthewsCredit:
PA/PA Archive

Mick told police he and Karen had planned the abduction together. As word got round – made worse by the news that Craig had been arrested for possession of child pornography – supporters on the estate turned. The family was moved to a safe house.

Karen insisted Mick was lying: “I asked her quite candidly 'have you been having a relationship with Mick Donovan, is that what this is about?’ She laughed and said 'Don’t be daft Christine”.

The denouement came three weeks after Shannon was found when Julie rang saying she and Natalie wanted to talk to Karen. “Natalie said “Friendship doesn’t end if you make a mistake or tell a lie. We need to know the truth”, recalls Christine. “She put a theory to her that she – Karen - had wanted to leave Craig and asked Mick to pick up Shannon. She was to join him with the other kids, but at the last minute, when she was going to tell Craig, she bottled it.

“Karen drew the biggest intake of breath I’ve ever heard and said 'Yes, that’s right”. I couldn’t believe it. Julie kept her talking and as she confessed I started making notes. Then I arrested her.”

Money played its part, Christine believes, but only once the drama was under way. Karen was simply too stupid to come up with a sophisticated plan: “When I arrested her she said 'Can I go home now?’ She just did not realise the enormity of what she’d done. She started changing her story and blaming other people and continued to do that, even in court.”

Despite that, there’s a bit of Christine that feels sorry for Karen: “This was a woman who wanted to leave her partner. She never in a million years expected the world’s press on her doorstep or the huge police response. It was like a snowball, it just got bigger and bigger.”

Shannon was taken into care. It was reported recently that Karen, who left prison in 2012, is now a tee-total, born-again Christian living in the south of England and hoping for plastic surgery to avoid attack. None of it need have happened: “That first day she should have said 'This is what I’ve done”,” says Christine. “It would have all been ok”.